In Katrina's wake, white neighborhood 'militia' murdered blacks
By David Neiwert Friday Dec 19, 2008 5:30amA.C. Thompson has a devastating piece in The Nation this week describing the all-white militia that took up arms to defend one of the few neighborhoods in New Orleans to stay dry after Hurricane Katrina broke the levees in 2005:
Facing an influx of refugees, the residents of Algiers Point could have pulled together food, water and medical supplies for the flood victims. Instead, a group of white residents, convinced that crime would arrive with the human exodus, sought to seal off the area, blocking the roads in and out of the neighborhood by dragging lumber and downed trees into the streets. They stockpiled handguns, assault rifles, shotguns and at least one Uzi and began patrolling the streets in pickup trucks and SUVs. The newly formed militia, a loose band of about fifteen to thirty residents, most of them men, all of them white, was looking for thieves, outlaws or, as one member put it, anyone who simply "didn't belong."
It started out as a classic case of white paranoiac overreaction to fears of looting and rioting and whatever else it is those black people do -- rather like the reaction you saw in sundown towns in the 1920s, which were similar in being "defended communities," to supposed threats of black depredations -- but quickly morphed into something else altogether:
Fellow militia member Wayne Janak, 60, a carpenter and contractor, is more forthcoming with me. "Three people got shot in just one day!" he tells me, laughing. We're sitting in his home, a boxy beige-and-pink structure on a corner about five blocks from Daigle's Grocery. "Three of them got hit right here in this intersection with a riot gun," he says, motioning toward the streets outside his home. Janak tells me he assumed the shooting victims, who were African-American, were looters because they were carrying sneakers and baseball caps with them. He guessed that the property had been stolen from a nearby shopping mall. According to Janak, a neighbor "unloaded a riot gun"--a shotgun--"on them. We chased them down."
Janak, who was carrying a pistol, says he grabbed one of the suspected looters and considered killing him, but decided to be merciful. "I rolled him over in the grass and saw that he'd been hit in the back with the riot gun," he tells me. "I thought that was good enough. I said, 'Go back to your neighborhood so people will know Algiers Point is not a place you go for a vacation. We're not doing tours right now.'"
He's equally blunt in Welcome to New Orleans, an hourlong documentary produced by the Danish video team, who captured Janak, beer in hand, gloating about hunting humans. Surrounded by a crowd of sunburned white Algiers Point locals at a barbeque held not long after the hurricane, he smiles and tells the camera, "It was great! It was like pheasant season in South Dakota. If it moved, you shot it." A native of Chicago, Janak also boasts of becoming a true Southerner, saying, "I am no longer a Yankee. I earned my wings." A white woman standing next to him adds, "He understands the N-word now." In this neighborhood, she continues, "we take care of our own."
Janak, who says he'd been armed with two .38s and a shotgun, brags about keeping the bloody shirt worn by a shooting victim as a trophy. When "looters" showed up in the neighborhood, "they left full of buckshot," he brags, adding, "You know what? Algiers Point is not a pussy community."
... Some of the gunmen prowling Algiers Point were out to wage a race war, says one woman whose uncle and two cousins joined the cause. A former New Orleanian, this source spoke to me anonymously because she fears her relatives could be prosecuted for their crimes. "My uncle was very excited that it was a free-for-all--white against black--that he could participate in," says the woman. "For him, the opportunity to hunt black people was a joy."
"They didn't want any of the 'ghetto niggers' coming over" from the east side of the river, she says, adding that her relatives viewed African-Americans who wandered into Algiers Point as "fair game." One of her cousins, a young man in his 20s, sent an e-mail to her and several other family members describing his adventures with the militia. He had attached a photo in which he posed next to an African-American man who'd been fatally shot. The tone of the e-mail, she says, was "gleeful"--her cousin was happy that "they were shooting niggers."
I'm just waiting for some Republican to tell us once again that "racism is dead."
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"THE ROAD" By Cormac Macarthy I'm sure you will see that the fiction of the book became reality in NOLA.
To these bubbas it's women and children first
But not to help them.
I'm absolutely floored...that mentality has to die out.
Could they?
"militias" went on killing sprees.
Fuck!
oh yeah , that's ANOTHER story.
let's just forget this stuff and get back to the war on Christmas
They're KKKree-yist-yins.
They ain't perfect.
Just forgiven.
Aren't these people admitting that they murdered people? Why aren't they in jail?
if not...then maybe something unfortunate will befall them.
if their heads exploded yet since 11/4.
I sure hope so...ignorant meatheads
This must have been when people tried to cross that bridge.
Wheres the State Attorney General?
These people are insane.
I have a feeling this isn't over.
If the law will not do something about this. People should.
they don't give a shit about the little people! They're too busy pleading the 5th to protect their own asses!
I agree, if justice is not done upon them in an official capacity, then it must be by other means.
Unfortunately if you are suggesting vigilante activity, it makes you no better then them.
Revolution is not vigilante activity.
It is justice.
"Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice."
"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats."
- H. L. Mencken
That is the difference between them and us.
One is still animal human, while the other is civilized.
We have a system to deal with people like this.
When the system fails, it is our responsibility to voice our protest of such actions and continue to do so until justice prevails.
As always, I'm an adherent of non-violent civil disobedience. I believe in resistance and I believe that violence is cyclical and therefore its exercise does not bring an end to oppression. Like Mencken, I'm an anarchist and a radical and I make no apologies for it. I believe that radical transformation of our hierarchical society is necessary for justice.
That said, what Mencken wrote is that one is tempted - temptation is not action. Mencken himself didn't commit violent acts, nor did he advocate them - he was a journalist & essayist. However, he recognized that the temptation to seek revenge or retribution is quite normal and well within the range of what is human.
We shouldn't fear or hide our urge toward anger & violence. On the contrary, it is essential to successful organizing to get it out in the open - otherwise you don't know who's an agent provocateur, who's acting without the discipline of non-violence training & who's simply unhinged.
Despite what Plato claimed, we are all animals - monkeys in pants, as the saying goes. We are no less animal than the "terrorists" and they are no less human. The difference is in discipline and socialization. Until we embrace that which we despise, we will continue to manifest it.
Thems McCain/Palin folks.
I agree.
was there any doubt?
This is unbelievable. They must be proud.
This is sickening.
Only it'll be Jeb/Palin in '12
have been permitted to pontificate their vile and devisive lies for the last twenty years - unanswered by reason.
That's what the media corporations want.
They target the fools who do their bidding.
It will continue unabated unless other voices can gain access, which won't happen.
They got plenty of native exemplars.
David Duke's home is just a couple of suburbs up-river...
You know these folks probably love them some Rick Warren. These are the folks Obama is spitting in the face of his gay and lesbian supporters in order to reach out to. And for what purpose? Does Obama think he could ever get these folks to support him? They'd try to shoot him if he came into their neighborhood.
The gay and lesbian people had Obama's back and supported him and what did they get in return? An inauguration speaking honor bestowed upon a Christo-fascist homophobe who's people will never support him.
Thanks Barry!
The shameful part of this story is that nothing will be done about it. I doubt anyone that was shot was doing any looting, like it said in the video, people had to go thru this neighborhood to get to the bus station to leave NOLA. It was all about justifying their own racist acts and ideas.
I just wonder..... who is proud to be from the south after watching this?
If we make a big enough stink about it, somebody in a position to do something, whether in an official capacity or not, will.
These cave-dwellers can NOT go unpunished.
mobilizing hundreds of thousands of people into the streets in protest - like we did in the sixties.
This caused the powers to shit a brick into their collective pants and to actually wonder if a revolution was about to occur.
In the last few years we were lucky to get 300 people to an antiwar rally here in PHX AZ.
I don't see it happening.
That is unfortunate.
Unfortunately this country is lazier than ever.
But I'm not talking about protests.
Eye for an eye...know what I'm sayin?
But I think that people will continue to keep their eyes tightly closed until they themselves are directly made desparate - before they would take action.
I'm beginning to think that pacifists, like me, are part of the problem.
But I think the lions share of the blame is on those who perpetrate such crimes.
Pacifism is a good thing...to a point.
I think that liberals should be more aggro, when it comes to standing up for others rights, and their own.
We should literally be ready and willing to fight for what is right, lest
we be plowed under by those who would destroy us.
And we need to fight like our very lives depend on it...because there may soon come a day, when it will.
I'm no pacifist when it comes to stating my beliefs.
That's why half of my family won't talk to me; if they say anything about "those people(TM)" I immediately seek to reeducate them in no uncertain terms.
Unfortunately, I think that the time has come for...other means.
Sorry to hear about your family not talkin to ya...
I have family like that too, and I drop science on their asses when they start showing their ignorance.
I think you're right.
The one side of my family in upstate SC, has one member that threatens to shoot me regularly. Usually every election cycle. Its like clockwork. Actually tried once too. He has issues though.
Then again, I married one of "those people"(tm). No, not those people ... those other people. Who may be worse than "those people" depending on which fear-mongering talking head you listen to.
But then again...I live in the sleazy keys, they live in Appalachia.
So we don't see each other very often.
Most of our communication is done through the inter-tubes...and usually consists of lame jokes.
Whoa...ya done got hitched to...da daaa daaaaa...."one of THOSE people"!!! Oh the horra...the horra.
;)
ever seen this?
I'm just sayin', being from Minnesota this isn't limited to the South, the funny thing is that I see more blacks and whites hanging out together down here than up north
And where I grew up there was racism, sure...but I also experienced more tolerance from blacks and whites toward each other, they would actually hang out with each other. But here in the keys, everyone is polarized bigtime...it ain't like what I'm used to...I miss that.
Down in S Fla in '04...Where I'm talking about are small towns like Brooksville and Dade City area
I saw more Obama signs and signs for local and state dems than republicans...
And alot more Obama stickers on cars...
and I went and put Obama stickers on every light pole in my neighborhood a week before the election one night, lol!
Most are still there.
They may have been looting.
What choice did they have?
It wasn't as if the government was going to come to their rescue.
If I had been trapped in NOLA during the flood and had a starving wife and children in need of food and clothes...
You bet that I would do some "looting."
Though I would have called it:
Using desparate measures to ensure the survival of my family.
Again - it wasn't as though the Repignican Govt was going to help in any way.
They were far to busy staging photo-ops and having birthday cakes and helping their cronies to loot the public treasury and covering-up and congratulating Brownie and sending in the guard - to Iraq.
Priorities, people!
I though everybody knew that...
I lived in Baton Rouge for 2 long years in the early '70s. I hated every long day of it. Some of them now, have the same mentality as they did then. The problem with that is, it's the next generation doing all the hating and teaching of hate. It must stop.
I found Baton Rouge to be parochial, and incestuous.
But Norman? Gawd! Okies are the most narrow-minded, xenophobic, anti-intellectual, bigoted haters in the whole UNIVERSE! I spent THIRTY YEARS in Norman, between 1994-2000...
Californias central valley sometime around Oildale and Pumpkin Center
n/t
lol, if they weren't all messed up on crack they were all messed up on the Lord in my experience there
and the only people I could tolerate were the blacks and the Latinos, nice peeps
Is that where the Great Pumpkin hails from?
...know, but there sure were a lot of pumpkinheads that lived there, as in 'hollow as a...'
My dad, I would consider a moderate Republican. He does not listen to Rush, Hanity, Savage or any other ultra right wing guys unless he wants to listen to some comedy.
Now he, and i'm think alot of others feel the same way, thinks that we should abolish programs like Affirmative Action, its not fair to single others out for job consideration. This is mostly based on the illusion that, hey its been 50 some odd years since the Civil Rights era and that conditions have improved so much that its no longer needed. Racism is almost non-existent.
However, Racism is alive and well in America and its not limited to the South. Given the surge of death threats and attempts on Barack Obama and the horrible aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we clearly need to keep working on this.
If you see people looting stores in your neighborhood, by all means, let them take what they want and leave. If you see them looting houses, by all means, shoot first, ask questions later. To shoot citizens because you THINK they might loot, or prevent people who need help from getting it, I don't consider that patriotic and I don't consider people like that to be actual citizens of this country. Anyone who puts property rights above human rights, should not have a voice in society.
Bernie Maloff looted from thousands of houses. Lucky for him he is white.
Unfortunately what we saw in New Orleans is going to be the reality in much of this country when the economy collapses. Far too many Americans have developed a "fuck you I've got mine" mentality that all started during the Reagan era. It's going to be every man (or woman) for himself (or herself) when basic services like food and water become scarce.
Having just re-watched Bowling for Columbine, I can totally understand how such monstrosities still take place in 21st century America.
The unfortunate reality is that the government, the media and as a result the police, aren't doing enough to end such racist behavior.
Buffoons like the one interviewed here should have been swiftly arrested and charged with murder, instead they're roaming free.
Where does America's fascination with gun come from, anyway?
This country was forged with the gun, guns will always be a part of our culture.
Pu$$y communities shoot unarmed people
I can't believe these racist shitheads talked about this on tape. Can't they be tried for murder? They are openly admitting it.
because they are small-town folks with small-town values.
Small town AMERICAN values! Like Obama said, it's all about guns and religion. Or at least a twisted form of religion.
rather like the reaction you saw in sundown towns in the 1920s,
Don't be a dark-skinned stranger in LaVerne, OK, after dark even today--well, okay, i dunno fer sher about 'today,' but it was true in 2000...
when these clowns also claim to be American.
Those of us who don't agree with them, ain't American.
This is the "real America" according to the likes of Sarah Palin.
but on the eastbank. i think there's a lot of b.s. in peoples' narratives this far removed in time. i did chat with one westbank guy who told me about cordoning off his neighborhood. he said that when out of state national guard showed up they were out gunned by his group. the guardsmen backed off their order to residents to vacate. one of the guardsmen noted that "they were there just to bag their limit" i.e. kill black people. the statement offended and shocked the clearly racist teller of the story.
i feel that we were abandoned here precisely so that we would attack each other. i didn't see that much of it in the week i stuck around, what i saw was ordinary people doing extraordinary things. thanks for all your help during that time and thereafter. y'all come on down and see us, it's 70 and sunny today.
Might be awhile though...
As for why NOLA was abandoned...it seems to me that the Bushit administration, wanted to rid the city of the "pesky" minorities, so they can take the property, build condos and sell it to "decent" white folks...
Sickening!!
I don't care what race you think you are, black, white, other, mixed or a friggin' martian. Don't go to NOLA. It was being abandoned before Katrina.
Well, OK, if you must .. take everything you need down with you. Make sure you bring your own job. Make sure you have your own circle of friends and keep them. The bunker mentality grows on you. Bring your own guns if you like. The city has been dying from the inside out for oh .. maybe 50 years? It's like this old south walking zombie that hasn't figured out its already dead, even if it lost two limbs in Katrina.
It will be more like this. There is this room. No one goes in, only people leave now days. You hear from people in the room that there is only one meal left in there now. The room has been around a while. Everyone in the room hates each other. Some of them have guns, all of them have screwed over someone else in that room sometime for some part of the last dozen meals that were to be had in there. So, everyone in the room has a valid grudge against someone by now. You hear things keep getting worse in there, really bad things are happening now.
So, you want to walk in the room with a meal, and say, "Hi ya'll whats up?"
NOLA...since Katrina...they are dying for some tourist dollars.
I live in the keys, I can dig where they're coming from, the tourist part, not the horrible Katrina stuff...I have never gone through anything like that. hope I never do.
But you sound like you live there now or know someone who does.
... in both my and my husband's family. NOLA proper, Metairie, Covington, Slidel, Baton Rouge, Opelousas. And I mentioned my marriage choice earlier in the thread. We won't live there. No jobs.
They need an economy, bad. Yep.
if you're having a hard time down here you ought to come over to my place, i'll see if i can help you out. really. this city, for all it's chaos, is still thriving in its own messed up way. i'll take introduce you over at "handa wanda" at second and dryades street. i'll get you a bowl of file gumbo at "tujague's" and a manhattan at the "napoleon house" then we'll go get loaded at "the nighthawk". the first battle of new orleans was the us's first decisive military victory and the first time imperial britain got to wear its own ass as a hat. the second battle of new orleans was the beginning of the end of republican hegemony. this city is ours, we will always win.
really, man, get in touch with me, i'll help you out any way i can. not joking.
Were you inviting me or Hechicera?
all of crooks and liars, all at the same time if you want. that will be a party! and we can go to the home of those trigger happy west bankers. seriously though, if you're planning to come down contact me. i'll show you what my good times look like. this is an awesomely rich culture.
where are the black panthers?
No Black Panthers, just Blackwater...
I can't even begin to explain my outrage over this report. And now, back to the War on Christmas! For cryin' out loud, what have we become? I get bent out of shape over the fact that people still try to run me down when I'm in a cross walk or why everyone is so upset that a road is posted 55 mph and doing that speed limit is a death sentence. Then, to the other extreme, is W and his cronies getting away with war crimes and murder and invading sovereign nations and wire tapping, etc. Will they be brought to justice? Hell no! So, now why are these good citizens of Algiers Point not in jail? Because who is going to put them there? The government? Hell no, they have their hands' full dealing with making the laws they can't possibly ever enforce! I'm not preaching anarchy nor do I want to see a 1984 scenario but how can we put an end to all this? Start with arresting some of them and continue by arresting W. What if, now I'm just sayin' here, what if, those good people of Algiers Point offered refuge instead of riot guns, would that have made them bad christians? What if W had actually worked his butt off to get help to NO after the storm. What if W would've actually caught OBL instead of killing SH and invading Iraq? Well maybe we might have caught Madoff long before this. Maybe we wouldn't be in the economic nightmare we're in now. The list goes on and on. Want an economic stimulus - Everyone interested ought to go to school to become a law ENFORCEMENT officer and/or PROSECUTING attorney. I'm so pissed right now, I'm foaming at the mouth!
Amen!
To tell Obama: No Deal asshole, you're betraying us every day.
Rick Warren can kiss my rusty keyhole. They're all part of the plutocracy, living off of our sweat while they drug us with propaganda, happy-face Facism.
I was so happy when Obama won only because the alternative was frightening to contemplate.
If thos of us who've woken up to the reality of what's going down in this country don't get off our asses and hold Obama's feet to the fire, it's going to be Clintonism all over again.
Get involved any way you can!
read twain's "diary of a campaign that failed". it sort of sums up the mentality of people like the shooters. for a lot of people the days after levees failed were the greatest adventure they ever had, they romanticize that time. let me tell you this, almost everyone who discharged a weapon in those days did so out of fear and while in a state of panic. tales of bravery are mostly just that. firing your weapon just gives away your position. i kept mine holstered.
People like that with a diminished mental capacity shouldn't be allowed to have a weapon, that would get rid of 90% of them.
Tell them their neighbor is out to get them or something and let 'em blast each other to smithereens
some sort of testing, like for a drivers license, might deal with the diminished capacity problem.
the shootout is already in progress check out the klan killing in louisiana last month.
But if someone wants a gun, and can't get it legally...they'll get a gun anyway.
say about abortion when they're dancing around the subject, 'safe and rare'.
Turn 'em in for an ounce or two of something and watch the illegal inventory drop.
How is it that we can limit the number of fish we catch or game we take but caint limit the amount of guns we manufacture?
Shit I don't need one hanging out of every orifice, I just need one
I think they want us to have alot of guns around in the general populace, not guns with which we can overthrow the govt. with, but guns we can shoot each other brains out with.
But I think 3 guns is a good amount for a hunter to have.
one pistol, one shotgun, and one deer rifle.
"The Private History of a campaign that Failed" by Mark Twain
The movie version with Edward Hermann (1981) was also very good and ended with his "War Prayer."
I like that saying. In the end we end up with a bunch of blind people. Acting like them is being like them.
Their hate comes from fear and ignorance. I know it's 2008 and they have the TV and all but that's not enough to educate or inform, really it isn't. If it were stories like this would have been front page news three years ago, starting with those lovely folks in Gretna Louisiana who blocked the only way out of New Orleans, shooting guns over the heads of the survivors and refugees of Katrina. Instead they were characterized as common criminal not the victims and survivors they were and still are.
Real change will come when common folk have the courage to speak up about this kind of racism and hate, in their day to day conversations. It's not easy speaking up around the screamers and yellers, the supporters of this kind of 'good ol'boy hate'.
It's not about convincing them.
It is about convincing those around them who are afraid to speak up around the loud mouthed Bill OReilly bullies. Speaking up lets others know they are not alone in their beliefs. It shows their courage in speaking out and it spreads one person at a time exponentially.
Who knows doing that could one day get a black man elected President of the United States.
because they were dark-skinned, saying they were defending themselves and their property as an excuse...they need to be dealt with harshly.
No quarter for murdering racist fucks.
I do agree though, with your statement for the most part...but sometimes, in cases like this especially, one needs to be a bit more...forceful.
just my two cents..
...including attempted murder in several counts (and murder if he actually killed someone), conspiracy to commit murder in several counts, and does so on camera. Someone please tell me, why isn't this ignorant fuck soaking up some watts in an aluminum chair in the local state pen?
What's up, NO? What happened to the police?
T
These ignorant bastards have been emboldened for eight years by the practices, policies and the attitudes of the Bush administration. In all honesty, these people frighten me more than any Muslim extremist.
While this sort of behavior is sickening and wrong, it's not as if white people could avoid being shot in the lower ninth ward. A white person walking in a neighborhood across the river in NO would absolutely be killed...even before Katrina.
By saying that black people do it too?
Is that what you're saying?
Unsubstantiated BS.
No this is true and both groups have sick racists among them. I lived in NO, have you? If you think white people can safely walk through the black ghettos in NO you are living in a fantasy world. Walking past the calliope projects is dangerous for anyone and if you are white it's a death sentence. If you think I'm bluffing why don't you fly to NO and give it a try...and I'm not racist either, It's wrong when any person of any race can't safely walk through any community.
And there's neighborhoods like that in every state.
I've walked through some trailer parks in the mountains before, and I tell ya...I damn sure didn't want to be there after the sun went down, and I'm white!
But these crackers were on camera, bragging about hunting them down.
I've seen some horrible things done by people from every race.
But seems to me that the white folks have it down to a science.
And if I could afford to fly anywhere right now, it would be to NC to see my folks.
But I'm a broke bastard.
So I ain't flyin nowhere.
Read some of the last two links in my longer post down below. The cbs link is a good one (link is to story in 2005).
Calliope, Desire, Magnolia, others ... I wouldn't walk by, and I wouldn't wish living in them (compounded by not just the project, but the crime, murder, worst schools public in the country and corrupt police) on my worst enemy.
Here is the first paragraph
"(AP) Last year, university researchers conducted an experiment in which police fired 700 blank rounds in a New Orleans neighborhood in a single afternoon. No one called to report the gunfire.".
Murder rates per capita in 2004 (BEFORE Katrina)
Detroit 42.1
New York 7.0
New Orleans 56.0
Not like walking through trailer park. People tell me the murder rate per capita for 2008 is going to be bad again. Jobs, money, they need them ... like the rest of us, yeah. I hear ya.
Racism -
1. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
2. Discrimination or prejudice based on race.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Discrimination -
1. The act of discriminating.
2. The ability or power to see or make fine distinctions; discernment.
3. Treatment or consideration based on class or category rather than individual merit; partiality or prejudice.
is this thing on?
How many tens of thousands of blacks have permanently left the city because of Katrina? How many cannot afford to return? How many were told not to?
And the repubichairs still want people to believe that their inaction toward New Orleans was not deliberate.
These comments show that town is one of very few Americans left who think with hate. Remember when Sarah Palin started her hate campaign. Uneducated people who wanted attention and no nothing else but follow someone joined in with Sarah. This is the few Americans who are slow and do things to brag and they want people to think their somebody. The people of Algiers Point now are known for who and what they are the lowest and they do not represent America. Pockets of groups still holding on to the pass but sorry we've mored on. Every person has to answer for what they've done if not while alive well when their dead. Like many who habor hate life isn't so good when you sleep.
Many during the Civil Rights that bragged about their crimes wake up many years later to see they were charged and convicted. This might also be the case with the murders done in Algiers Point.
went to La. and announced the high number of "flood victims" that were shot in the back?
Then he was richly rewarded by the Bush Justice Dept with 84 criminal counts of which half were thrown out, the jury deadlocked on the rest of the charges for a mis-trial.There is a petition set up to stop a second trial but I can't post the link here for some reason.If you're interested just google his name.
Get you priorities straight Whistle Blowers bad, Murdering Thugs Good!
It's the BUSHED way.
Man...this country has gone down the shitter in a hurry...I man it's been circlin the bowl for awhile...but damn...
I've already commented on Metafilter,good ole cut and paste.
Anecdote, after anecdote. This is shabby reporting. People who know someone, drunken crackers claiming to know things that happened but never actually witnessed. A shooting victim's assailant is described as a "civilian gunman"- the article supposes that we will assume the skin color of course. It seems that the article has no evidence directly linking any other shootings during the flood to vigilante / mob behavior other than the first situation described. The doctor relates information of other shootings - "as many as 11 some who may have died" but no evidence of their skin color / or who they were. In a time of absolute chaos, to criticize the record keeping of the coroners office seems a stretch also.
Much like Brandonblatcher's link the chaos led to gross exaggerations based on hearsay and rumor. This article is too little too late and does no good as an investigative piece to discover information or evidence that it alleges happened.
The militia men are clear about their racism towards blacks. Even if you leave out the killings, they are nothing but worthless pieces of scum, a waste of flesh.
And, wasn't one posing with a victim, like a big game hunter poses with his kill?
Yeah....that would be crazy. I guess I need to go back and read the entire article.
Me intar-web is actin all wonkified!
We have a long history of behaving just as these men did. The indigenous peoples of the Americas died for that very reason. We were afraid.
First we hunker down in fear, then we become angry and go out to kill whoever we are afraid of.
WPE played out that scenario when he invaded Iraq and killed millions of people because of what Saddam Hussein might be able to do someday.
So long as we glorify the first person shooter we will continue to behave just like these men.
Really, I don't blame them for getting together to protect their neighborhood and expecting the worse. Now, if they just decided to shoot down any black person or any one who didn't belong in the neighborhood, that's a different story. You can't blame them for at least being prepared. If they did murder someone, there's no guarantee that the person didn't do anything threatening either. We'll never really know. But as far as forming a militia to protect and defend their families and property.....don't blame them one bit.
I would protect mine...but did you actually read the entire article?
They bragged about killing black people who "didn't belong".
And your statement "If they did MURDER someone, there's no guarantee that person didn't do anything threatening either." The key word in that sentence is MURDER, not self defense!!! Defending ones self from another intending to harm you with deadly force, is in some circumstances, justifiable, and legal...actively hunting down people who have darker skin than yours to kill them is barbaric.
You're a racist idiot. These people admitted that they shot black people for the simple crime of carrying shoes and baseball caps which they ASSUMED were stolen. THAT is NOT "defending their families and property"
No, they simply wanted to shoot them some blacks and were looking for any excuse to do so. THAT is a crime in any other country but Amerikkka.
I really feel for the "good people of Louisiana", to have to live with this mix of sick, f*cked up criminal minds as "the norm".
I am so disgusted with these stories from "dixieland". I know it exists everywhere...but it's so prevalent in the South. It's just sad.
Wayne Janak, is that his real name?
If so, why is he not in jail right now? He basically admitted that he and his "folk" shot black people out of vigilante justice. Is that not a crime in America? Or does it only matter when it's black on white?
The double standard in America is truly sickening and is a perfect illustration of the rotten core that permeates its stench on the world.
You want a view of the south, and racism, picking one of the worse dying southern cities, during a catastrophe .. yep, you saw some. You missed one of the bigger scandals, the bridge blockades. Its pretty classic NOLA, especially if you know the neighborhoods. Sheriff Harry Lee can walk on water as far as Metairie is concerned. I'm conflicted on him, but a lower crime suburb (not just in Katrina) in one of the highest crime and murder cities ... it is something.
Good in-depth read:
http://blog.nola.com/times-picayune/2007/09/b...
Recent testimony:
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/09/2_...
And in a recent ruling:
http://www.wdsu.com/news/18250710/detail.html...
The reason NOLA, esp. in the crucible of Katrina is too easy a target, is because it had so many problems. The problems go WAY beyond, there was a few midwestern, white, racist transplants who thought they could get away with murder. So, four guys got shot in Algiers ... making that different from a normal week, how? You really need to understand NOLA and murder to understand some of the reactions. Here:
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/metro/index.ssf?...
Gun shots? Who'd report that even on a sunny day.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/08/18/nat...
And, if they won't report gunfire, you have to wonder if the true crime rate is. Crime rates only measure *reported* crimes. At least with a murder, often, the dead body gives the crime away. Dave, why do I feel like I'm doing background for you? My posts get too long.
Anyway, the interesting thing here. Most of the whites have said things like "Thank God for Katrina", cleaned up the projects and all "those people" (who murdered) for us when we couldn't. See, the hand of God. Well, funny that.
Adjusted murder rates for 2007 were higher than in 2005.
American cowboyism alive and well in the 21st century. Someone should tell these people we've moved on.
it makes me ashamed to be white! - What's wrong with these people? we need to KKKick the KKK out of the KKKountry!
I'm sorry when I see stuff like this it make me so mad I can't think straight.
If I was ever to be bigoted against any one group it would have to be WHITE PEOPLE!
ok, ok! we can be cool (some of us) but as a group we don't have a good track record! Fuck Whitey!
To reach out and be inclusive and stuff.
Guess your assessment is correct.
How else does one explain a freak like James Ihnofe getting re-elected?
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